Now I'm not going to argue if deities exist or not my position is to act as if deities don't exist until such time as evidence is sufficient to change that. I'm instead going to look at the cost benefit of spending money, resources and time on theism's pursuit of honoring said beings to include but not limited to: holy places, a professional clergy, donations to finance these, hours spent at all levels of theology, time spent in worship, persecutions and fighting heresy and divisions in society. This from the perspective as per times when science and reason became popular enough to question these at two points Greek Thought to Roman Thought in the Natural Sciences and the Age of Enlightenment in the West. Now my case and its simple is without clear evidence of a god or gods, and I mean seeing them and interacting with them. And further they do something that is worthy of spending these resources for the good or bad then why is it sensible to do so. Let me give two examples: Mook the god comes down with eight super beings his solars and said you worship me building temples and sacrifice to me one bull per million people a month or I will send them to smite eight cities per year and slaughter one tenth of the worlds population then spending all that would make complete sense as a cost/benefit. Iooka is a goddess and if you build to her monoliths and for that and worshipping her she will assure perfect health to all people in the populated area and protect them from major natural disasters and assure good crops etc. then I would say its also worth it since there are tangible benefits as a cost/benefit. But what do we get invisible beings, second hand accounts from less than reputable sources and no benefits from any beings doing things in simple terms its all just waste. I just don't see how Theists can support this system for all that money say using only the last few centuries if you took just half that and let people keep some as more personal money and time we could have had modest taxes and focused the massive means to vital pursuits advancing our knowledge of science, agriculture, community education, libraries, encourages physical fitness, helped build systems to help the poor and the disabled and fought great social evils such as racism and sexism. But no instead we tossed these resources largely away on nothing. The modest social benefits are not outweighed by the negatives if one looks at things like the institution of slavery globally as just one supported by theistic religious books.
I think a lot of Christians see the benefit in the way that the bible teaches them to look at problems and endure challenges. My mom was one of the kindest people ever and always looked for ways to find the good in people. She was pretty old school Christian too, with the no gays, the earth is 6,000 years old thing. She ways understood that this was her faith and other people see things differently and that the most important thing is to be kind to others. She wasn't perfect obviously but she really tried and was a great example. Christianity can teach people to be grateful for what they have and to not envy what everyone else has. Those are the two things I see as the best things about the religion. I just wish more people thought about how important it is to be respectful to others. It's definitely a challenge at times.
My father and best friend are believers and not church goers, but sincere in belief, that is not what is so concerning to my argument its the impact of billions wasting resources on this globally over centuries and millennia comparing the benefits to the expending of overall resources its to me a sum loss without clear benefits to our species either protecting us from vengeful beings or gaining benefits from benign ones. But I see waste when we could have used just part of time, resources and wealth of our species on practical things using reason and science over time.
I see your point. One has to weigh out the good and bad to try to get a net result to decide if the overall result makes religion worthwhile. Unfortunately few religious people view their own organization or philosophy as the one that is at fault. Christianity, for example, has this idea of some Christians being true and others false. Everyone thinks their particular brand of Christianity has it all figured out and the rest are part of the false religions that bear the responsibility for all the negative aspects of religious thinking.
That is the problem with Theism and its folly, one far deeper than one lays at Atheism, since our position doesn't cost society anything but rather would focus our efforts in practical things. I can get some things are good about faith its simple to let a god take care of you and to shun complex things like science and crafting a moral system of your own letting others do these things but its not healthy for the person or society and the species.
